A Behavioural Analysis of Sponsorship

Abstract

Managers’ increasing use of sponsorship has not been parallelled by a growth in either their knowledge of evaluation methods or the sophistication of those they employ. Studies documenting management practice have revealed widespread use of informal sponsorship feedback measures and, where more formal measures are used, these relate only indirectly to sponsorship objectives. Given that most marketing actions are undertaken to change, modify or reinforce consumer’ behaviour, it is logical to examine whether sponsorship has any behavioural consequences. This paper outlines a choice modelling experiment designed to investigate how sponsorship affected consumers’ choice behaviour for two products: milk and bank investments. In both categories, sponsorship had a strong influence on the behaviour of a small group of consumers. However, overall, its influence was slight compared to the other attributes examined, and depended heavily on the cause promoted.